Screaming about crime after Charlotte’s train stabbing is not only political, it’s wrong | Opinion

The U.S. prison population exceeded 1 million for the first time in 1994 and peaked at 1.6 million in 2009. It spiked briefly during the pandemic in 2020 then fell to 1.2 million in 2023.

Now, it’s on pace to fall to 600,000.

There are several reasons for this steady decline, including that liberals oppose high incarceration rates in steel cages and conservatives don’t want to waste taxpayer money.

The result has been that men and women are less likely to go to prison, and are less likely to be given sentences as long as the ones that were handed out a few decades ago. Law enforcement officers have also been arresting fewer young people.

During this period of time, something else was happening. The violent crime rate was falling.

It’s one of the most remarkable achievements of the 21st century. The United States of America, known for having the highest incarceration rate of any real democracy on Earth and where each state has a higher incarceration rate than most other nations, found a way to keep more Americans free while ensuring more of us are safe.

But it feels as though no one wants to take credit, or even acknowledge that reality.

Maybe because screaming about crime is a sure-fire way for elected officials, and those running for office, to gain attention and votes.

It’s precisely what’s happening in the aftermath of an ungodly killing on a Charlotte light rail line in late August. Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee, was allegedly stabbed to death by 34-year-old Decarlos Brown, a man with a reported history of mental health issues.

It was the scariest kind of violence, random. While all murders are tragic, those involving people who know each other are at a remove. As a light rail rider told The Charlotte Observer, this creates a different level of fear because, “It could have been anybody. It could have been me.”

Mass shootings and horrific killings like this generate so much attention, despite their rarity, because they can’t be anticipated. Zarutska simply sat down in front of a man she could not have known was mentally unstable and dangerous.

Deaths like this are why the public often doesn’t believe violent crime rates are falling.

And that’s why politicians are quick to talk up individual incidents of crime, particularly if they can blame them on an opponent, no matter how tenuous the connection.

Such politicians want us to be weak, stupid and scared. Because even if their rhetoric makes things worse for the community, it will improve their political prospects.

These politicians are also selective in their outrage, which is why some people who believe that the Second Amendment counters potential government overreach are fine with President Donald Trump putting the military on our streets and sending out roving groups of masked, armed men to snatch people off the sidewalk and disappear them into unmarked vans.

North Carolina Republicans were quick to claim former N.C. Gov. and current Senate candidate Roy Cooper was soft on crime.

“A vote for Roy Cooper is a vote for more crime,” texted Michael Whatley, the man hoping to face Cooper during the general election for the seat now held by Sen. Thom Tillis. “Cooper and his cohorts in the radical left simply value criminals more than victims, full stop.”

It’s the kind of reckless rhetoric that often leads to bad ill-fated policy.

Some of those using Zarutska’s death as a political talking point also talk down the implications of the violent insurrection attempt in the heart of our nation’s capital in 2021, and the record numbers of Americans dying of gun violence now. There were more than 48,000 gun suicides and gun homicides a year in 2021 and 2022 and more than 46,000 in 2023.

Less than two weeks before Zarutska was killed, a man fired more than 200 bullets at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta before authorities say he killed himself. He, too, had a reported history of mental illness.

I don’t remember those who are using Zarutska as a talking point — including President Trump, who is calling for the death penalty in this case — being particularly disturbed by that incident. Because it did not serve their purposes.

Redoubling efforts to ensure people are not only safe but feel safe is always a good idea.

Doing it for the wrong reasons and in the wrong way can undo progress built over decades by a coalition of people not ideologically aligned, progress that has made things better for us all. Playing politics with crime will take us in the opposite direction, more prisoners and less safe streets. But only if we give into the fears bad actors are preying upon.

Issac J. Bailey is a McClatchy opinion writer in North Carolina and South Carolina.

This story was originally published September 10, 2025 at 10:03 AM with the headline "Screaming about crime after Charlotte’s train stabbing is not only political, it’s wrong | Opinion."